Hotel restaurant POS: why the bill should land on the guest's room

A standalone restaurant sells to people who pay before they leave. A hotel restaurant also sells to guests who sign for dinner and pay days later at reception. That one difference is where most hotel food and beverage revenue goes missing.

When the restaurant till and the front desk are separate systems, every room charge has to cross the gap by hand: a signed slip carried to reception and typed onto the bill. On a busy night some slips arrive late, some arrive wrong, a few never arrive at all, and by then the guest has gone.

1. 1

   Charge to room

   Post a bill straight to an in-house guest's bill, checked against a guest who is actually staying in that room.

2. 2

   Kitchen tickets

   Send the order to the kitchen printer or screen as it is taken, and send only the new items when a table orders more.

3. 3

   Split bills

   Split by guest, by item or evenly, with each part paid its own way and the parts always adding back up to the total.

4. 4

   Service charge and tax

   Calculated the way your invoices must show them, with your tax registration number on the receipt.

5. 5

   Shift close

   Open each shift with a cash float and close it with a count, so a difference between the till and the drawer is found the same night.

6. 6

   Room service

   Orders from a guest's phone or the room phone go into the same kitchen queue as the restaurant.

7. 7

   Stock by recipe

   Selling a dish draws down its ingredients, so you know what the kitchen used and not just what it bought.

• Room charges never posted. The guest checks out before the slip reaches reception.
• The wrong room. A charge typed onto 214 instead of 241, found when the wrong guest disputes it.
• Unexplained voids and discounts. Items removed from a bill with no reason and no name against them.
• Stock that disappears. Nothing connects what was sold with what was used, so waste and loss look identical.

A POS that posts to the room directly and records a reason for every void closes the first three. Recipe costing starts to close the fourth.

Food cost percentage is the cost of the ingredients used divided by food revenue. When your recipes are in the system, you can compare what the kitchen should have used for the dishes it sold with what actually left the store, and the difference points to waste, over-portioning or loss. Even a rough version, done monthly, tells you more than the total on a supplier's invoice.

Most hotel restaurants use 80mm thermal printers for receipts and kitchen tickets. A modern POS runs in a browser on a tablet or computer and prints to them, so ask whether your existing printers will work before buying new ones. Letting waiters take orders on a phone at the table saves a walk back to a terminal for every order.

The Orian POS is part of the same system as your front desk. Settling a bill to a room puts it on the guest's bill immediately, so checkout is a settlement rather than a search for slips. Orders go to the kitchen once, with later rounds printed as additions; bills split by guest, item or evenly and always reconcile to the cent; service charge and VAT follow your property's settings; and each cashier shift closes with an expected-against-counted cash report.

Menu items can be linked to recipes so every sale draws down stock. See how it works for restaurants and for resorts with several outlets on one guest bill.